Originally Posted by JCG:
Originally Posted by Soylent Green:
Hoping I'm not included under the "contentious" umbrella... or is any dissenting viewpoint taken as an affront?
My reason for responding didn't have anything to do with longevity of buckets... Moreso to do with teaching young men about focus, respect and doing things right. I mean... What are we really talking about here? A family man apparently takes his own life... this was related to youth baseball in some way? And as a result of this tragic event, here are several questionable baseball tenants to live by henceforth... Take your player out of competitive level ball, skip practices, do whatever you feel like when choosing to attend practice, etc. Hmm... Good luck with all that!
Thanks for this
I'm with you. When confronted with inexplicable loss, we look for any lesson we can tease from the void. I get that. But I do not get the connection between this man's suicide and the best practices in running a 12u baseball team.
We don't know why this man did what he did. Depression? Marriage and/or financial issues? We don't know so we shouldn't judge, though personally I confess a predisposition to label him as a selfish man for leaving behind at least one boy who will be haunted by this for the rest of his life. And running the gas tank empty sure sounds like the action of a man who didn't care too much for whoever has to clean up his mess.
I don't know. If anything I see an argument for teaching kids to take care of their own business and not leaving it for somebody else to clean up. A good baseball program does that. I think it would also give me one reason to keep going if ever I felt as bad as this guy must have felt.
Cabbagedad said it best that this post is about "Enjoy life every day and don't let it become always overly stressful and goal-oriented, particularly with young kids. You never know when a given day can be the last. Seek out all the moments of pure joy to share with your kids along the journey."....he gets the intended meaning of this post.
The underlines red statements I highlighted above show that you do not get the intended meaning of this post.
There are moments in time where a kid should be a kid first and a ballplayer second, and yes, some of those times can actually happen ON A BALL FIELD.
